I don't see how this is dramatically better than existing systems that can fire a rope ladder on hooks onto the railing. I suppose there's a failure rate on th

I don't see how this is dramatically better than existing systems that can fire a rope ladder on hooks onto the railing. I suppose there's a failure rate on those attaching, but you can realistically carry several of those on a boarding party. I presume the Royal Marines know far more than me about such matters, but I just can't see the use. It's a soft target strapped to a small jet engine that seems liable to shred itself into shrapnel if it gets hit by small arms fire. I can't imagine it's pleasant to fly in the wind either, especially if the wind isn't constant. Judging by the way they were flying, and that the maneuverability seems to largely come from those bits on their hands, it also doesn't seem particularly agile. You're not going to generate a lot of lateral force without the risk of snapping the operators wrist/forearm. Presuming there are hostiles on board the ship, they seem like they could rather easily take one of these down with some buckshot. Even if you don't get a lethal hit, the impact seems like it would likely make the operator lose control of the jetpack either from rotation or just from the sheer shock of being shot. It seems like they'd either slam into the ship (bad), or fall into the ocean at which point the turbines would disintegrate in the water like helicopter blades flinging shrapnel into the operator (also bad). If I had to rank them from my armchair, I'd take a water-based boarding using launched rope ladders first, air-based boarding via rappelling from a helicopter second (assuming I knew how to do that) and this thing third. It has all the risks of getting shot down that a helicopter does (except that it doesn't even take an RPG to take down the jetpack), combined with still having to make a water-based entry.